How much would the Tau gain by using indirect fire weapons?

[Chaotic Neutral]

Since almost everything the Tau use seems to be guided, would they gain any noticeable advantages by using indirect weapons? Or would the effect not be noticeable?

[Srelex]

They already sort of do...

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Airburs ... _Projector

And I think they have smart missiles which don't need line of sight, so meh.

[Chaotic Neutral]

It's one thing to have a guided missile, it's another to blanket an area with artillery, which the Tau seem to never do.

[Srelex]

They do, however, seem to use Macross Missile Massacres, which often accomplish similar effects.

[Chaotic Neutral]

So you think they would gain little?

[Srelex]

Meh, it honestly depends. The Tau aren't fond of protracted campaigns and missile spam suits their doctrine. I think it would honestly depend on the power of their missiles, which as far as I know is pretty vague.

[Simon_Jester]

My impression is that the Tau suffer from some strategic limits. Their interstellar transport system is a bit underdeveloped because of the lack of high-speed warp travel, and their preference for light, highly mobile vehicles reduces the mass of ammunition they can carry. That combination could make the logistics a bit awkward for Tau forces trying to drown an enemy position in artillery fire the way the Imperium does. The Imperium can do that because they have forge worlds that have been in operation for fifteen or twenty thousand years, more freight capacity than they know what to do with, and support vehicles that tend to be... well, call them big-boned.

It's natural that the Tau rely on guided weapons to optimize their bang per ton of munitions expended, given the circumstances.

[Purple]

There is that, and than there is their whole strategic doctrine.

I have not read a lot about the Tau. But from what I gather about them is that they focus on fast strategic strikes on rather than prolonged battles. Under these conditions, a Katyusha like missile spam attack would be preferable to a long crawling artillery barrage. This is because you would want to do as much damage and shock to the enemy troops in as little time possible right before an attack, opposed to bombarding them for days and weeks.

If my hunch is correct. Their attacks should begin with a missile spam fallowed up by an immediate strike with guided artillery picking off anything that provides a threat. Something like Blitzkrieg but with battle suits and missiles.

This would sinergise greatly with their high mobility forces. It would also be the logical tactic to use considering that most of their opponents need to be taken down quickly and decisively simply because if they are given enough time (like a conventional barrage would) they would be able to easily bring their vast numerical superiority to bear.

You definitively do not want to give the Imperial Guard weeks of notice to just where your strike is going to be.

[someone_else]

They already sort of do...
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Airburs ... _Projector
And I think they have smart missiles which don't need line of sight, so meh.

I am Tau miniature player, so I can answer with my experience. Although I haven't read more lore than the Tau's minitaure army's guide so I don't know a lot of fluff.
The linked thing is a Crisis Suit's (the gundam-like thingy) gun, and more specifically an anti-infantry gun that sucks. It is roughly comparable to a mortar, not to artillery. And its range is less than the average rifle in the game.

The "smart missiles that don't need line of sight" are a little better, anti-infantry guided rockets that have an actual reason to exist (shoot from behind total cover) and a decent range. Generally reserved for attacks of opportunity because they usually are secondary weapons on vehicles with heavier guns.

So you think they would gain little?

Tau seem to rely on fast troop redeployment and precision strikes with overwhelming focused firepower to exploit weak spots of bigger and clumsier armies like Imperium and Orks, and have extensive air support that provides rapid weapon platforms for such maneuvers.
Crisis suits munch through space marines with frightening ease and Dreadnaughts are easy prey of railguns.
They also don't seem to favor long drawn fights, if something doesn't fall fast they go away and redeploy somewhere else.
Running away fast is also the best thing to do because if the enemy gets too close he pwns you even if he is charging your whole army with a lone Guardsmen (Tau have the lowest melee combat skills of the whole game, comparable to "very wet paper").

A good example of this is the Manta space/aircraft, while most races have Titans (Warhound, Reaver, Eldar's sissy titan) Tau have Mantas, an aircraft (friggin fast, can disengage and get back in the following rounds if "cornered") that packs a pretty respectable long-range firepower, has some shields, and has a huge cargo bay to unload vehicles and troops in the middle of the enemy's forces.
(btw, mantas are just tiny "bombers" in the 40k fleet battle game)

[someone_else]

Btw2: this is theory and assumes a lore-like army, in real games you won't find either Mantas (who dumps more than a thousand euros to buy one?!) nor half-rational armies that actually make sense from a military standpoint.
Munchkins and Min-Maxers are the norm. And in that case Tau plain suck. As simple as that.

[Connor MacLeod]

Tau doctrine had some real flaws in it (my favorite still remains the "we'll abandon all our cities and industry if we have to because static warfare is always bad and mobility is good") but they have changed some over the years since their last codexes (especially planetstrike and 5th edition.) They're more flexible when it comes to static warfare in some respects (they still hate it and avoid it if they can, but they'll employ it if they must and can do so, but in their own way.)

I also suspect that, like the Imperium, the Tau have a "theory" and "practice" thing going on. Their FTL communication situation is even worse than the Imperium's, so their military leaders (and the leaders of other Castes) have to act independently of centralized authority (save perhaps an Ethereal advisor.) That means that while the "central" authority may preach or advocate one thing, the ones out in the field may or may not follow that depending on circumstances. Over time the Tau have gained a bit more of a tarnished image with some of their commanders (Eg sterilization of humans) but that just simply reflects the fact that despite their propoganda, the tau aren't nearly as mindlessly unified as they claim.

That said, they are rather limited when it comes to indirect fire weapons (more often than not it is only missiles, which work well enough) but they don't seem to like or employ any tube artillery. Which is odd, since given their preferred tactics (staying far away and blasting with lots of firepower) you'd think they'd go for a tank or gunship that stayed out of line of sight of the enemy and pounded them with indirect railgun barrages. With their technology they probably could do that (Pathfinder and stealth teams and drones and satellites and other intel assets would do wonders picking out such targets.)

[Chaotic Neutral]

Not to derail or anything, but 2 more questions. Why isn't there a rotary Pulse Rifle (Like a Burst Cannon with more range)? Ditto for the railrifle (You could probably get a few hundred RPMs by using 8 or 9).

It seems like they purposefully limit themselves with Anti-infantry weapons. (Possibly because if they went as far as they could, they would crush all opponents)

[Srelex]

Overheating? Ammunition conservation? Recoil problems?

[Simon_Jester]

In-game partly balance; if their anti-infantry weapons improved much more it would be very hard for enemy horde armies to beat them, I suspect.

[Chaotic Neutral]

Overheating?

Unless you fire insanely fast, rotary weapons don't have that problem, 9x pulse rifles at 200 RPM = 1800 RPM, no overheating required.

Ammunition conservation?

That seems unlikely, since burst cannons already are used.

Recoil problems?

On a battlesuit? Those can fire twinlinked heavy railguns, what would stop them from using rotary railrifles?

[Srelex]

Unless you fire insanely fast, rotary weapons don't have that problem, 9x pulse rifles at 200 RPM = 1800 RPM, no overheating required.

That depends on how much heat Tau weapons generate in the first place.

That seems unlikely, since burst cannons already are used.

I think Burst cannons are energy weapons. Besides, there doesn't seem to be much room on the suit itself for a storage of conventional ammo.

On a battlesuit? Those can fire twinlinked heavy railguns, what would stop them from using rotary railrifles?

Specialized ones can, and those are limited in their mobility as far as I'm aware. They also need to lock themselves down to fire their weapons.

[Chaotic Neutral]

That depends on how much heat Tau weapons generate in the first place.

What I mean is that you can fire the weapons at standard speed and still have a massive RPM count. I don't think pulse rifles or railrifles have overheating problems so yeah.

I think Burst cannons are energy weapons. Besides, there doesn't seem to be much room on the suit itself for a storage of conventional ammo.

Battlesuits can be fitted with rockets, flamers, meltas, and railguns, so they obviously have the room. Besides, I think Pulse Cannons take gas ammunition or something.

Specialized ones can, and those are limited in their mobility as far as I'm aware. They also need to lock themselves down to fire their weapons.

The variants fire twinlinked tank-grade railguns. I am assuming that 9-16 railrifles (infantry weapons) would have no problems with recoil even on a smaller battlesuit.

[Srelex]

Actually, what are the rates of fire for Tau rail weapons anyway? That's the important question here.

[Chaotic Neutral]

Even assuming something low like 50 RPM, you get 500 RPM by making a rotary version with 10. (I didn't find anything on Google.)

[Purple]

The issue of why they don't do it is the same as why we today don't make machine guns with sniper ranges.

The pulse rifle is a long range weapon analogous to the pre world war II and WWII rifles. If anything, the descriptions I have seen of it remind me most of the M1 rifle or 1950's battle rifles. (Although I am not really a fan of the Tau so I might be wrong). It has a strong cartridge that can hit a target at long range but a comparatively low rate of fire.

This all makes sense if your troops are going to be picking off enemies carefully at a long range.
But with a machine gun, your main goal is to pin down troops in an area and hence you can't take your sweet time aiming for each round. And once you get into rifle ranges, if you don't carefully aim each shot you are not going to get much in terms of accuracy.
And firing into a mass of enemy troops will naturally be more effective at shorter ranges where you can just fire into the wall of flesh.


It is the same reason why modern heavy machine guns don't generally have ranges comparable to sniper rifles.

[Chaotic Neutral]

The issue of why they don't do it is the same as why we today don't make machine guns with sniper ranges.

The pulse rifle is a long range weapon analogous to the pre world war II and WWII rifles. If anything, the descriptions I have seen of it remind me most of the M1 rifle or 1950's battle rifles. (Although I am not really a fan of the Tau so I might be wrong). It has a strong cartridge that can hit a target at long range but a comparatively low rate of fire.

This all makes sense if your troops are going to be picking off enemies carefully at a long range.
But with a machine gun, your main goal is to pin down troops in an area and hence you can't take your sweet time aiming for each round. And once you get into rifle ranges, if you don't carefully aim each shot you are not going to get much in terms of accuracy.
And firing into a mass of enemy troops will naturally be more effective at shorter ranges where you can just fire into the wall of flesh.


It is the same reason why modern heavy machine guns don't generally have ranges comparable to sniper rifles.

That would make sense, IF things in 40K didn't take weapons with sniper firepower to effectively kill. Hence most weapons that can one hit infantry have near-sniper ranges.

[adam_grif]

The issue of why they don't do it is the same as why we today don't make machine guns with sniper ranges.

Machineguns have huge effective ranges; the M60 out to 1100 meters for area targets, the M40 sniper rifle is only effective out to ~800m, despite sharing the same cartridge. Naturally, machineguns are by no means as accurate as sniper rifles, but they absolutely are effective out to similar ranges or even beyond.

[someone_else]

Their FTL communication situation is even worse than the Imperium's, so their military leaders (and the leaders of other Castes) have to act independently of centralized authority (save perhaps an Ethereal advisor.) That means that while the "central" authority may preach or advocate one thing, the ones out in the field may or may not follow that depending on circumstances. Over time the Tau have gained a bit more of a tarnished image with some of their commanders (Eg sterilization of humans) but that just simply reflects the fact that despite their propoganda, the tau aren't nearly as mindlessly unified as they claim.

What I read is that Ethereals are regarded as semi-divinities, and they have some kind of power that allows them to demand and receive complete obbedience from the Tau they are with.

I also read that any time they wanted to expand, they set up a party with all the castes and various Ethereals, then move and colonize.

There was that guy... a Tau commander named Farsight. The ethereals of his expedition were killed by the orks, and he smashed those orks and then settled down, raised a new bigger army and continued to smash orks even if the central command told him to stop and get back.
His colonies are somewhat rebel, although he claims that only him truly recognizes the ork threat to the contrary of the ethereals and fights to keep the orks from gnawing Tau empire.

Not to derail or anything, but 2 more questions. Why isn't there a rotary Pulse Rifle (Like a Burst Cannon with more range)? Ditto for the railrifle (You could probably get a few hundred RPMs by using 8 or 9).

Pulse rifle has a pretty good range, coupled with a rather good stopping power for an infantry weapon. It kinda sucks at penetrating armor, but anyway....
The logical answer is that you cannot go full-auto while shooting at long distances, or your aim fucks up.
And that is represented by the rule "if the enemy is at less than 12 inches each pulse rifle shoots twice". Which is obvious. The soldier aims better when on long range, or goes rambo when the enemy gets close.
So, Pulse Rifles are already capable of at least burst, and maybe autofire.

Now, if the question was a cleaverly camuflaged "Why the hell the Weapons Mounted on Battlesuits suck balls so hard?" then I can only say that the game designers were masturbating on Eldars when Tau codex was written.

But the problem seem to plague all the battlesuit weapons:

-Burst Cannon: Clearly an anti-infantry weapon. considering that most action in tabletops is between elite units with much better stats, that's already useless. But I can go on: it doesn't make any sense for a frikkin battlesuit to use a gun that has a so ludicrously tiny range. Only madmen use it in the tabletop games, because if you can shoot on the enemy, he can charge you the next turn, and its suckyness means you won't really deal lots of kills with it unless you are shooting on guard or orks (which means those crisis suits are gonna get raped anyway, no matter how much kills the score due to the huge number of targets).
They make those stealth teams useless. You need to be so close that they are going to shoot on you anyways.

-Plasma rifle: is CLEARLY BIGGER than the imperium's and mounted on a huge armored suit, but has subpar strenght (6 instead of 7) and the same exact range of the handheld variety (doesn't risk to fail and force an armor throw, but that's not really an issue with a 3+ armor). Thankfully kept the VP2 ability and the "two shots if the enemy is closer than 12 inches" or they would have been total crap.
Hello? Someone in there? That's a battlesuit at least 5 meters tall shooting a plasma cannon big as a man! The range is PLAIN WRONG, as the damage potential.

-Fusion blaster: Exact same stats as the Imperum's melta. It is about twice as big and is mounted on a frikkin 5 meter tall battlesuit. Maybe a little buff? Maybe 18 inches range, or maybe two shots. Nothing.

-Flamer: exact same stats as imperium's flamer. You fucking crazy? Who is going to get so close (with a 5 meter tall suit) to flame anyone if crisis battlesuit have the average melee skill of my granma? Either bigger "flame spread" or if you think it is too much, something like the guard's transport vehicle (or was it hellound?) that shoots his "flame spread" wherever it wants as long as it is into 24 inches of range.

-experimental weapons for boss only: seriously, you call those weapons? The cyclic ion blaster is unreliable at best, while the air-burping fart projector behaves like a crossbreed between a flamer and a burst cannon.

-rocket launcher: decent anti-light vehicle weapon, has a range more close to what I had in mind for a battlesuit gun (36 inches)

-Drones: No. Simply No. Especially with the 5th edition rulebook

The only thing of Tau that PWNS EVERYTHING is the rail cannon. Bust about any vehicle with ease, even in other tabletops surrounding the one you are playing on. But that's it.
Tau are supposed to rely on battlesuits to slaughter anything better than infantry and they suck.

If Burst Cannons had the range of a Pulse Rifle, I'd be happy.
If they added fucking Repeating Rail Rifles (3 shots, STR6 AP3) to the arsenal, I'd be happy.
But the only thing that I'd really love to have is a Plasma Cannon. 36 inches of range, single shot, str7 AP2. Hell, is that expecting too much from a battlesuit at least 5 meters tall shooting a plasma cannon big as a man?

Hopefully, the guys at Forge World started to realize that there was the need for something that the enemy cannot laugh at.
After this obscenely useless W00t! I shoot double-barreled burp cannons!, they designed a Wow! I shoot Lots Of Meltas!, and then I PWN U WITH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER.
I really hope the stats for them don't suck as much as I think they will (that "despite each charge being less powerful than an Imperial equivalent" makes me wonder a little). I need to track down the Imperial Armor Apocalypse II to find out.

There is also a Pretty Cool Boss In Battlesuit too.

It seems like they purposefully limit themselves with Anti-infantry weapons. (Possibly because if they went as far as they could, they would crush all opponents)

No. The battlesuits cost a fucking lot of points, and generally fail to deliver.
One of my friends with Imperial Guard can drop 5 squads of 5 guys with 4 plasma and one melta, that all shoot in the same round of the drop (although at max 12 inches range), and each team costs just above ONE battlesuit.
One of those squads tends to rape the nearest vehicle (8 plasma shots + one melta), or severely damage your best units in the vicinity.

As a general rule, this applies to most vehicle-mounted guns too. Burp-cannons are ubiquitous as pointless on a vehicle that snipes stuff at 72 inches with his main gun, and the same are pointless the drones attached to the vehicle, similar stupid range, and they don't even get a decent rate of fire nor a decent aim.

Oh well, rant over.

[Srelex]

I think we're talking in terms of fluff--the tabletop design shouldn't have much bearing here. In the fluff, Tau battlesuits at are at least adequate on the battlefield from what I can gather, depending on the source.

That said, from my experiance the effectiveness of suits in the game simply depends on how lucky your dice are--along with pretty much everything else. But I do agree that those Forgeworld models look awesome.

[someone_else]

Well, Battlesuits suck in both the tabletop and DoW computer game. There must be a reason behind that.

Besides, as I said, I never read more than the Tau codex from the game, and lexicanum sin't much better. Can anyone link to some fluff about them?